Clothes racks are very common features that are often found in stores, homes, businesses, schools, churches, and just about everywhere people congregate. The purpose of a clothes rack is to hold garments, such as overcoats, sweaters, scarves, hats and other clothing when they are not being worn. Clothes racks have proven to be highly useful and beneficial and as such are very widely accepted.
While clothes racks are very successful some attire is just not well-suited to the common clothes rack, for example, safety harnesses. By their nature safety harnesses are important devices that should be securely hung in a manner that protects them while also preventing them from being inadvertently removed. This is critical because when a safety harness is needed it must be available to help protect the wearer and possibly others from harm.
Safety harnesses are not particularly well-suited for storing on a common clothing rack. For example, safety harness may have oddly shaped straps, may be imbalanced, may have one (1) or more external features that might get in the way if hung on a normal clothing rack, and may have large gaps. Thus, most safety harnesses are either stored flat or they are hung by one (1) of the few common features found on most safety harnesses, a safety harness ring.
A safety harness ring is usually an “O”-shaped or a “D”-shaped ring that is used as a connection point for various straps, buckles, braces and other features of the safety harness. As such a safety harness rings tend to be centrally located and physically strong. Usually made of metal, a safety harness ring is difficult to twist, cut, break, and/or split. Thus, safety harness rings have been hung on hooks or other features to vertically retain safety harnesses on walls and other structures.
However, safety harnesses that are just hung by their safety harness rings are subject to being inadvertently moved, borrowed, stolen, or otherwise misplaced. Various types of securing mechanisms have been used for safety harnesses to help ensure that they are available when needed. While somewhat successful, prior art attempts at securing safety harnesses tend to have usability problems. First, in places such as fire departments, police stations, military installations, and logging companies it is highly desirable to lock all safety harnesses at the same time. That enables such facilities to visually and easily count and account for all of their safety harnesses. If one (1) is missing it is readily apparent.
Another problem with prior art devices for securing safety harnesses is that it is often highly desirable to be able to individually lock safety harness. That way if a “wearer” is not present that wearer can be assured that his safety harness is protected. In addition a given wearer may own his own safety harness, which may represent a relatively large economic asset and which may be needed in his profession. The owner would want to ensure that his safety harness is protected.
Accordingly, there exists a need for safety harness racks that can individually secure safety harnesses while also enabling multiple safety harnesses to be secured. Ideally a safety harness rack would be easy to use and highly effective. Preferably such a safety harness rack would lock a safety harness by locking its safety harness ring in place. Even more preferably such a safety harness rack would vertically secure safety harnesses. Ideally such a safety harness rack would be suitable for being supplied at low cost.